The European Parliament rejected on Wednesday a legislative project that would have required a reduction in the use of pesticides in the EU, thus effectively burying the initiative, as it is unlikely that the European Commission will present a new version of the text in the short time left before the European Parliament elections in June 2024. AFP and Agerpres report.

An important element of the European Green Deal, this legislation, proposed by the European Commission in June 2022, aimed to halve by 2030, compared to the period 2015-2017, the use of chemical plant protection products in the EU and the risks associated with them. .

The European People’s Party (EPP), which was the most opposed to the draft, managed to include amendments that would have significantly weakened the text, which was eventually rejected by MEPs by 299 votes against, 207 in favor and 121 abstentions.

In addition, MEPs rejected re-sending the text to the European Parliament’s environment committee, so there is no future for the legislative project, which has also divided member states.

Thus, the speaker of the text, environmentalist Sarah Wiener, spoke of a “dark day” for the environment. The European Parliament “rejected this law as distorted (by the EPP amendments), the conservatives endangered the health of farmers and biodiversity by fighting at any cost against the reduction of pesticide use,” said German MEP Jutta Paulus, a member of the Green group. .

EPP MEPs strongly opposed the text, as did the agricultural trade union organization Copa-Cogeca, as well as some member states more concerned about agricultural yields than the environment, amid growing opposition to increasingly restrictive environmental regulations.

“Today was a good day for farmers and for all those who believe that the EU should refrain from imposing new burdens on them,” said German MEP Peter Liese from the EPP group.

And in agricultural organizations, after the rejection of the text, they rejoiced: “Finally! The European Parliament recognizes that the ‘pesticides’ regulation was a poorly calibrated, unrealistic, unfunded, mere ideological text,” said Copa-Cogeca, CEO of Copa-Cogeca.

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